


i know it's hard but we need each other

by eovaldi



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Boston Red Sox, Drunk Texting, Drunken Confessions, Ghost love, Ghosts, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Washington Nationals, yeah rick is NOT a met
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22171027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eovaldi/pseuds/eovaldi
Summary: Do you love me?Like, I mean. Love love me. like not as a friend.Cause a lot of the time, I feel like I like you as not a friend. Like a crush. You’re so incredible.It shouldve been us Max. This shoudlv been us.Max's stomach dropped into the bottom of his shoes. Fuck.
Relationships: Rick Porcello/Max Scherzer
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: MLB Exchange 2019





	i know it's hard but we need each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saddestboner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddestboner/gifts).

> someone dies in this fic but it happens completely offscreen, so DONT FRET  
edit: it’s been pointed out to me that i accidentally implied rick commits suicide, which wasn’t the intent!!! i’m gonna come back and fix this eventually probably but for now i threw a suicide tag on it

Rick is having a magic year. A year of insane proportions, and he’d had a Cy Young winning season just two years ago. There was just something about the team he was on, their chemistry, their ability to all click at the same time. Max hated to admit it, but he was a little jealous. He had always kept track of Rick and his accomplishments ever since they had parted ways for different teams, and he’d never really been jealous before, just proud. 

The Nats weren’t bad, they had a winning record. They came in second in the division. But they weren’t winning the World Series this year. Max knew that. When Rick had ripped that double off him in Nationals Park, with that mischievous grin on his face, Max kind of knew then. He really tried to believe in the power of baseball, the magic way that the game had of tricking you into thinking nothing's over until the last out. But they just didn’t have it. The Red Sox? They had it. They were on a tear, an unbelievable tear. He kept waiting for the moment Rick would run into a wall, but he didn’t. He was a workhorse in the playoffs. Max had watched Rick’s World Series start, a gem of a game where his team left him out to dry. It was beautiful. Rick was beautiful. When the game finally ended in the early hours of the morning, Max was left stunned. He’d called Rick up and congratulated him on a great game, wished his team good luck in the rest of the World Series.

“I’m behind you, you’re gonna kill this thing.”

It was the last thing he’d ever said to Rick Porcello.

When the Red Sox won, Max had fired off a congratulations text, because if he knew Rick, he was drowning in booze and teammates right now, his favorite way to celebrate. Rick was so tightly wound, that the second he let himself have a little fun, he had a tendency to spiral out of control. Winning the World Series almost called for it, in Max’s opinion. 

It shocked Max that Rick texted back. He expected that he'd be far too gone to even bother having his phone on him.

_ Thanks, dude! _

_ I really never thought it’d be me who won first, to be honset. _

_ Oh shut up. _

_ When I was a rookie I wanted to win together. _

_ I wanted to cvoer you in chaampagne _

_ How drunk are you right now? _

_ Fucking wasted _

Max smiled at his phone screen. Rick could be so honest sometimes, so forthcoming. Other times, he’d shut up like a clam, worrying a thought in his throat until it turned into a pearl. But when Rick was drunk, there was no stopping him. His phone buzzing dislodged him from his vague worry about Rick’s safety. 

_ Hey max _

_ Maaaax _

_ Maxxxy _

_ Sorry, it's late here. I'm three hours ahead remember? And I have a kid _

_ You're such a dad. Cna I ask you a question? _

_ Yeah, Rick, of course. _

_ Do you love me? _

_ Like, I mean. Love love me. like not as a friend. _

_ Cause a lot of the time, I feel like I like you as not a friend. Like a crush. You’re so incredible. _

_ It shouldve been us Max. This shoudlv been us. _

Max's stomach dropped into the bottom of his shoes. _ Fuck. _

He couldn’t lie, he’d seen this coming. He can't think of what to say suddenly, his brain felt frozen. Rick doesn’t really understand what he's doing, why he's doing this, does he? It’s just a moment of passion and emotion he can’t describe after the most intense game of his life, right? It can’t be what it he says it is. They're two prominent major leaguers. Both of them are elite. He can't be doing this. He can’t do this to Max. 

So he shut his phone off, tosses it onto his nightstand. He'll leave this situation for future Max to deal with. His phone buzzed for another hour or so, and Max never really felt like he fell all the way asleep, his mind stayed full of Rick, and what Rick was doing, what he could be telling everyone in that sticky, sweet clubhouse.

When Max woke up, he was met with the sight of several more drunk texts, all of them with poor grammar and poor spelling. A twinge of guilt spiked in Max’s stomach for not responding. He shouldn’t have left Rick hanging. But now it was way too late to do anything except lay in this bed Max made for himself.

_ Max? You there? _

_ I'm sorry. im really drunk. ignore me _

_ Max, pelase. _

_ We dont have to talk about it anymore. I just...promised myself if I won a world series before you, I’d tell you how I felt. but I never thought it'd actually happen. _

Sleep hadn’t magically made it so Max could think straight. He couldn’t look at Ricks name above these drunk texts. He wanted to tell Rick he loved him back, because in some ways, he did. Rick was his baseball soulmate, they belonged together. They should've won together, Rick was right about that much. They should've been covered in champagne, Rick smiling that sly smile at Max. The thought brought a hollow feeling into his chest. Had he ruined Rick’s golden moment by not responding? Was Rick regretting saying this because now he was sober? 

Max's phone buzzed again. 

_ I’m sorry. Please, can we talk about this? _

He didn’t respond, he couldn’t find it in himself to, not yet, anyway. He put his phone down, and went into the other room, to pick his daughter up out of her crib. Bouncing her gently on his knee, all of the thoughts he had about Rick, the situation, jealousy about the championship, they all melted away. Like it’d never happened. He needed something else outside of himself to focus on, and since there was no baseball, being a dad was going to have to cut it for now.

* * *

Max had ignored the dangerous texts for a few days, and Rick had obviously been content to just let them sit there, but today was the World Series parade, so Max felt even more on edge than usual. He had been feeding Brooklyn, well, failing at feeding her, when his phone lit up with more texts from Rick. Max’s good mood instantly disappeared, and he was yanked back to reality. He’d been putting this off for a reason. Spoiling Rick’s World Series celebration felt like a crime, and Max was never one to try to ruin someone else’s good time. But the conversation they needed to have was deadly serious, and would definitely put a damper on Rick’s bender. 

_ Max, i've been drunk for a week _

_ but i meant it...i can't lie to you anymore _

_ I love you enough that ive gotta tell you how i feel. _

The parade passed without any more texts, and Rick was still drunk, or at least the pictures made it seem that way. Max’s friends and colleagues were chirping about Rick and his antics, even Erica joined in, and sent Max a picture of Rick, shirtless atop his very own championship duck boat. The familiar jealousy coiled in his stomach, seeing Rick drunkenly hug Chris Sale on the duck boat, watching Rick strip his shirt off in celebration of his trophy. Seeing the pictures of Rick just made him wonder; when was it all going to come crashing down? When would he finally have to respond to Rick? The jealousy mixed with dread in the pit of his stomach.

Max was never succinctly spoken. He had trouble talking in moments where important things mattered, where he needed to say the right thing and say it perfectly. He wanted to tell Rick exactly how he felt, but in reality, he just wasn't sure how he felt. It was more complicated than either drunk Rick or sober Rick seemed to think. It wasn’t even that Max was married, with a wife, and a kid, because Erica was a saint, and she loved Rick too and wanted him to be happy. It was the fact they both liked men, that Rick was so ready to do something so dangerous and risky, with so many eyes watching. It made Max’s stomach churn. Not with pity, or hate, but anxiety. Rick could come out, because Rick was brave, and clever. Nevermind the clubhouse, or the fans, Rick could say he liked men, if he wanted to. He would live. But Max never could do something like that. That wasn't an option. He was too big. Max was immortal, a certain Hall of Fame vote someday. When you are a god, the way Max was a god, you don't get to be human. You just have to stand alone, up there on the mound, waiting for something to drag you back to Earth, for something to make you mortal again.

* * *

A week after Rick Porcello drunkenly confessed to Max his love for the other man, he disappeared into the woods. He'd told his mom he was going fly fishing, set out, and never returned. They never found his car, or his body, or any trace of him whatsoever. It was like he'd never existed. There was no funeral, there was no obituary. Eventually, everyone just sort of gave up on trying to find him. 

When Max first heard the news, he was playing with his daughter, and his phone rang suddenly. Max had gotten over his anxiety about picking up the phone a few years before this. After his brother, he'd been terrified, frozen at the thought of picking up the phone and being confronted on the other side with the news of someone dying. But he'd been working really hard on that with his therapist, on accepting that not every phone call was going to be as devastating as that one.

This one came pretty close.

“Max Scherzer?” It was Rick's mom, calling Max in a frenzy. Her voice sounded so heartbroken, her words dragging, in a way that was familiar to Max. It was a mother's grief. His heart sunk. This could only be bad. "I was just calling ...Rick, he’s not with you? Is he?" Max's jaw fell on the floor, his free hand came up to scratch at the beginnings of his offseason beard. 

“No, Mrs. Porcello. He’s not here. I haven’t heard from him since the World Series ended? Is he…” He almost regretted answering her question, and asking his own in turn.

“He’s been missing a week.” Her voice broke in the middle of her sentence. Max could feel the yawning hole that was in her chest in her voice, and the way it was eating her insides up. She sounded so scared. Max wanted more than anything to be able to tell her he knew where Rick was. "I just wanted to see if you knew where he might've gone. Or if he was with you. I'm grasping at straws here." 

He couldn’t lie to her though. "No, no. He's not with me. I haven't heard from him since..." Max realized the last time he'd heard from Rick had been him begging Max not to be angry with him. For confessing his feelings, for being honest. As if Max could ever be mad at Rick for anything other than entirely idiotic baseball reasons.

"The police told me not to get my hopes up. Out in the woods, in the Fall, he could...it's not likely. But I'm not going to give up on him. He is my baby." She sounded so much like Max's mom. His heart ached for her, for Rick, for his daughter, so tiny, unaware of anything in the world right now, except shoving Little People into her mouth to chew on. He wished she got to grow up in a better world. He didn’t realize he’d gone quiet on the other end of the phone until Rick’s mom interrupted his spiral. 

"Please Max, call me if you hear from him." 

"Of course. And if you need anything, please call me. I'd be more than happy to help you out, anything, I mean it." It was really all he could do.

The walls felt like they were closing in on Max as soon as he hung up the phone. It felt like his fault. Following the logic lead him to the only conclusion, it was his fault. All Rick had wanted was Max to ante up and respond to him. Even if he wasn't sure what to say, he still should've said something. He tried to cast the thought out of his mind, and focus on the fact that he couldn’t change the past, Rick would turn up. He had to. A world without Rick was unthinkable.

Weeks passed. Max went back to therapy regularly, trying to get ahead of the grief and the guilt. It didn’t work. He just couldn't shake the feeling that this was all his fault. And the longer they went without hearing from Rick, or finding him, the more Max's guilt grew in his chest, along with the grief. Reading the texts over and over was not going to fix anything, he knew that. But he still would sit there for what felt like hours, reading over what happened between Rick and him on that night. It was supposed to be the greatest moment of Rick's life, and instead, Max had fucked it all up, all because he couldn't figure out what to say. In reality, he knew it wasn't that simple, nothing was ever that simple. But it certainly felt like he should bear the weight of the responsibility for this one.

He really did love Rick, maybe not like Rick loved him, but Rick was his soulmate, that was undeniable. Rick was his baseball soulmate. They fit each other perfectly, the stern competitiveness, the need for greatness, the longing for the win. Even their personalities and sense of humor seemed to match each other, compliment the other. Like a good beer with a great meal. Max had always looked forward to someday being able to face Rick, head on, and it had really bummed him out when Rick had gone to an American League team, and Max to a National League one. There would be no great rivalry built between them, like the two had always sort of craved. If they couldn't win together, they wanted to beat the other in submission. That was why Rick's double had felt so _ good _. It was a reminder that for Max, Rick was always going to be his other half. Without Rick around to joke with, or to tease, or get teased by, there was a hole in Max’s life. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. He should’ve said something to Rick, he owed him that much. And now, as much as he didn’t want to accept it, it seemed like he was never going to be able to say anything to Rick ever again.

* * *

Max was a practical guy. He wouldn’t say that he was as superstitious as most pitchers were. He didn’t pray before starts, he didn’t eat the same food every day before he took the mound. He just studied the data, watched the tape, stood on the mound, and delivered. Max lived his life pretty much by the same rules too. 

He knows ghosts don’t exist. Or they shouldn’t exist. If they did, Alex would’ve come back and tried to explain himself, at least once. And in all these years, Max had had no contact with the other side, no things moving in his house, no inexplicable signs that from some great beyond, his brother was trying to communicate with him.

But he was running out of explanations for whatever was currently happening in his house right now. About a month after Rick had gone missing, Max had started misplacing things. Chronically. Erica was extremely irritated, and Max would swear, he put his tie back, or he set his watch on the counter to put the dishes away, or his sunglasses were on the kitchen table. And every time, as soon as he was about to give up and just buy a replacement, he’d find them in the oddest places. His watch behind the TV, his sunglasses on top of a bunch of boxes in the garage, his wedding ring, tucked into a drawer somewhere he was sure he never opened. He felt crazy. Brooklyn wasn’t old enough to be pilfering things yet, and Erica wouldn’t play a trick on Max, and Max wasn’t trying to play a trick on her either. 

But he could write it off as just him not thinking, since Rick had gone into the forest, he’d found his mind felt especially cloudy. Max could be prone to a little depression between baseball seasons, but this was new. He could hardly get out of bed sometimes. He knew it was probably grief, but when Alex had died, he just felt angry for the first couple of weeks. Instead, this odd cloud had come over his brain, descending the longer Rick was gone. It felt like he was tethered to a cinder block that was yanking him out of reality, and further down into his own mind. He just felt _ tired _.

Then came the destruction. Vases wouldn’t just fall over, no, it was like they were _ shoved _ off shelves. It reminded Max of having a cat, who would bat things off of high surfaces for fun. And the second he’d replace whatever ended up being broken, the next day it’d wind up on the floor again. Not only was it annoying, but probably borderline dangerous too, with a kid running around the house. And soon after that, Max couldn’t keep candles lit, his lights would flicker on and off. Sometimes, he’d watch his daughter on the baby monitor, laughing and playing, almost like…

But that was too far. She was just a kid, the wind was knocking shit off the shelves, and Max was going crazy. 

And then there were the dreams Max was having terrible, terrible dreams. These nightmares that he’d wake up from, sweating buckets and shivering. In them, he was always standing on the bank of a big, lazy river. The kind that was good for fishing, the kind Rick would love to wade out into the center of, and stand there for hours, catching big silver fish, throwing them back.

And Rick, he would be there, standing in the middle of the river in his waders, back turned to Max. But the second Max ever tried to step forward to get to Rick, it suddenly felt like the water turned to concrete around his legs. He couldn’t move. And then something would come up the river, a big dark shadow, bigger than a shark, bigger than a whale, and it would drag Rick under the water with a silent splash. Not even a scream. And then Max would wake up, take a lap around his house, drink a glass of water, and try not to think about Rick.

And he’d always fail. He’d fall back into a fitful sleep, dreamless, thankfully, but not really restful. This whole thing was doing a number on Max, when he looked in the mirror, he thought he looked old. He certainly felt old. His hand would come up to his face to scrub at his scruff, and he’d start worrying about what would happen when baseball came back. Either the guilt of entering a season without Rick for the first time in a long time would rip him in two, or the game would give him a distraction. Regardless, he was going to play. Rick wouldn’t have wanted him to quit, but he still couldn’t help but dwell on it.

* * *

Once 2019 came around, Max's dreams took a turn. No longer was he trapped on the shore of the river, with his feet in the bank, but now he was standing in the water with Rick, up to his stomach. The water was cold, enough to make him shiver. But unlike the other dreams, he didn't have this urge to run towards Rick, but instead, to call his name. "Rick!" He'd yell, to no avail. "It's Max!" He was never sure what he actually wanted to tell Rick, he just wanted Rick to acknowledge him for Christ's sake. To turn towards him and smile that weird mysterious smile, raise one of his eyebrows as if to say, "Really?"

But suddenly, one night when Max woke up the banks of the river, and he rose to stand in the water, to start his routine of calling out for Rick, he saw that Rick was actually turned towards him this time. It felt like a great burden lifted off of Max's shoulders, to see Rick's face. And Rick was calling out to him too, or at least, that’s what Max assumed. There wasn't really any noise coming out of his mouth. It was so ominous, terrifying. Could Max not remember what Rick sounded like anymore? 

Telling his therapist about these dreams didn't make them go away, and telling Erica just got her started down this path where she was trying to help Max work through this thing that Max just couldn't get past. He would sound so stupid if he told her what he actually thought, that the dreams and all the weird things happening around the house, _ that was Rick _. He was trying to reach out, trying to tell him something. Maybe he was mad at Max, and decided he was gonna try to take his career down out of spite. Maybe Rick felt like it was Max's fault, the same way Max did. But it all sounded so dumb, so trivial. Ghosts weren't real, Rick wasn't terrorizing the house, the groaning he heard in the night was the floorboards, and Max's dreams were a product of guilt. 

These were all facts, facts that Max could trust. 

Max quickly figured out he was no longer dealing in absolutes when he was giving his daughter a bath one night, and he felt a cold blast of air fill the room. It’d been happening a lot, he just figured it was the house being drafty or something, which was a paper thin justification, since the house had never been drafty before this winter. 

Max felt the sensation of eyes on his back, like someone had just entered the room. Suddenly, he couldn't move, and his daughter's eyes were fixed on a spot just above Max's shoulder, like there was someone, or something, standing there, looking over his shoulder. She smiled and clapped her hands, and made some happy baby noises. But that didn't assuage Max's fear, which was holding him stiff as a board. He felt like if he moved his head, averted his gaze off the baby in the tub, he'd see something he didn't want to.

"You can't ignore me forever, Max," whispered the air in his ear.

“What the _ fuck _.” Max usually tried very hard not to cuss around his daughter. “Now I’ve lost it, for real.” She just giggled in response, and splashed the water. 

“You haven’t. Don’t worry.” It had that low, monotonous cadence to it. So familiar that it tore open Max’s chest with aching. It was Rick’s voice. “This is totally, completely, real.”

“It...can’t be. Ghosts aren’t real.” Max’s voice was a whisper now, and he still was avoiding looking over his shoulder until he couldn’t bear it a second longer. “If I’m not dreaming, I’ll turn, and there won’t be anything next to me. And then I’ll wake up.”

"Well, go ahead then." Rick said, like a challenge.

Max could never turn down a challenge from Rick. So, he turned, and what he saw nearly made him die right there. It was Rick. 

Max had never seen a ghost before, so he didn't know what to expect. It certainly wasn't like the typical floating sheet. It also wasn't like Rick was just a partially transparent man. It was like he was there, but not at the same time. Max couldn't explain it to himself, it was like his mind couldn't process the information he was seeing, like his eyes were trying to look anywhere but Rick. Like he couldn't accept it. It wasn't meant for understanding.

But there he was. 

"Shit." was all Max could manage.

Rick did Max a favor and, and left him alone so he could get his daughter dried off, clothed, and in her crib. She went out like a light, and he heard Rick's soft laugh in her room, echoing around the walls. "I always thought it was weird that she could see me, but you couldn't. You know, I thought maybe cause of your eye..." Rick appeared, out of nowhere as he said that, the sly smile on his face that he used to wear when he was alive.

“Shut up.” The smile that crept across Max’s face felt more real than any he’d had in the last few months. “You owe me, for all the crap you knocked over.” For the first time, Max noticed he was dressed head to toe in his fishing gear. The weird waterproof overalls, a flannel shirt, his big boots. _ At least he died doing what he loved. _  
  
“Oh yeah, I’ll get you the money ASAP, lemme just pull my wallet out.” Rick shoved his hand into the back of his waders, “Oh wait, I don’t have any money, ‘cause I’m dead.” Rick started giggling like a mad man, and Max followed. It felt so nice to have him back, Max didn’t even care if it was real or if he was crazy.

Rick followed Max out of the room, making absolutely not a sound. Max didn’t know what to do, was he supposed to offer Rick food, or water? He decided they could at least sit, or float, in Rick’s case, above the couch in Max’s living room. All kinds of questions were swirling in his head right now. Why Max? Why not Rick’s own family? Could anyone else see him? It all felt so confusing, he had so many questions, but the first thing that came out of his mouth was -

“So those dreams I was having, with you there, in the river, was that...you?” As soon as he asked it he felt so stupid for having even wondered that. It was obvious.

“Sort of. I can’t really...explain. But it was like, when you dreamt, suddenly, I’d be there. But I wasn’t in control. I think in some way, I kind of...live in your subconscious?”

All Max could muster in return was. “Sure.” If Rick was a ghost who was attached to Max’s subconscious, then, fine. At least he was here, and talking. But Max had to wonder, when was the elephant in the room going to be acknowledged. It certainly was hanging over Max's head, but he couldn't quite tell if Rick remembered. Maybe, if this was just a piece of his subconscious or whatever, he didn't want to talk about it. If he was mirroring Max’s thoughts, or grief, or wants... Maybe they’d just ignore it. But Max knew it wouldn’t bring him any closure. At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not Rick was real, or he’d lost his mind, it was still his fault they ended up here in the first place. 

“You know, since I live in your subconscious...I can hear you think, right?” Max’s cheeks heated up involuntarily. Rick sounded a little more irritated than Max had been expecting, honestly. He really was hoping they’d never have to talk about it. 

“That didn’t ever cross my mind.” Max admitted to Rick. 

“Well, you brought it up. We can talk about it, since you’re obviously wracking yourself with guilt.” Rick had taken on that venomous tone that he got when he was angry. His voice was low and calculating, like he was analyzing the situation and trying to win a fight, no matter how dirty. “That’s probably at least half of the reason I’m back in the first place.”  
  
“I just...wanted to say I was sorry. I know it wasn’t right. I should’ve said something.” He couldn’t look up from his lap suddenly. Rick’s gaze was fixed on him though when Max finally looked up at him.

“Yeah. You should’ve.” The expression on Rick’s face was practically unreadable. “I was - am - mad. I thought you hated me.” There was a silence, that said a lot more than the two of their words could get across. He’d really fucked Rick up. “The dying thing, that was just an accident. So, stop blaming yourself. It was just terrible timing.”

Max smiled a little bit, in a sarcastic way. “You know I’m terrible at not blaming myself.”

“I know. But I’m here, telling you not to.” Like it was that simple. Max was going to have a hell of a session in therapy next week. “I just need to know that you don’t hate me for what I said.”

“I could never hate you. I just...didn’t know what you wanted. For me to leave my family? My kid?” Max couldn’t even imagine it, but that had just felt like the end result of Rick’s line of questioning to him. 

“No. I just thought you should know. I’ve always had this terrible, horrible crush on you, ever since I was a rookie.” Rick seemed so nervous. He was rubbing at his arm with one of his hands. Making this terrible face, like it _ hurt _ to admit it. Max thought about how he must’ve looked in the middle of the tarped clubhouse, sticky and wet, texting him this. Of course he had to be drunk to do it. “And I thought, it’s really stupid, but you know, people can date more than one person at a time...and Erica’s so nice and accepting of all people, that maybe…” Rick’s voice trailed off, his thoughts having followed the logic to its conclusion, Max was right there with him. It seemed so honest, Max wished more than anything that it had gotten to work out. 

“Rick, I loved you. You are the only person I think understands me sometimes. But I think...well. I can’t date a ghost.” He hated letting Rick down, but surprisingly, Rick just let out a chuckle.  
  
“You’re so literal. That was obviously before...this. We can figure it out as we go, okay. Haven’t we always been good at adapting?” He was smiling at Max. Rick was always too proud to apologize, but this certainly felt like an olive branch.

Max smiled softly back. “Yeah...we have.” 

* * *

The haunting became a familiar thing. Erica took it really well, actually. Max went and bought nearly as many books on the paranormal as he did buying books about being a father. A lot of them were bullshit, but a lot of them actually helped. Rick wasn’t malicious, he had just been confused, lost, hurting. And now that they’d sorted it out, Rick was actually nice to have around. He’d clean up, or make stupid faces at Brooklyn, or just hang out on the couch and watch baseball.

That was still his favorite thing to do. Max would get home from the ballpark and immediately Rick would start in, yelling about pitching or batting or how Max shouldn’t be fucking _ bunting _, he was already ugly enough as it was without the broken nose. Max was just kind of grateful that Rick didn’t follow him to the ballpark. He wasn’t sure he could handle that. 

And when Max won the World Series, he cried on TV. He cried for himself, and for Alex, and for Rick, even though as soon as he got home from Houston, Rick was practically yelling in his ear, urging Max to get super fucked up at the parade, because it was the most fun Rick had ever had in his entire life.

It felt right. Rick would’ve wanted Max to slam beers on top of parade floats, and ride a zamboni shirtless, and whatever dumbass drunk antics Max wanted to get up to. It was the best moment of his life. 

And when Max wakes up the next day, Rick tells him as much, and to take an aspirin. 

**Author's Note:**

> i had SO MUCH FUN writing this! i love the occult and ghosts, so i hope that comes through a little bit in this, i've never written something about ghosts that wasn't horribly depressing. i hope you enjoy it, please leave a comment if you liked it even a little bit! i stole the title from sugar by brockhampton


End file.
